Writing about the food, farmers, fishermen, and folk of Long Island's North Fork.

December 2014

12/30/2014

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTOJacki Dunning outside the Shelter Island School where she welcomes new families every year.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on December 18, 2014

When Jacki Dunning sits down on Christmas Day, with upwards of 30 family members for a daylong feast, weed soup will highlight the menu.

Really.

But it’s not as grim as it sounds. The dish, a chicken broth-based soup with tiny meatballs, carrots and dandelion, came down from her grandmother, who taught the dish to Jacki’s mother.

“This is the course I’m responsible for each year,” Jacki said. “We still have the same menu my grandparents served when I was a child, the menu my father and his siblings grew up with.”

In her home on Wade Road and at the Shelter Island School where she has worked for eight years, Jacki is a tradition-keeper, a problem-solver and as vital a link between generations of Shelter Island School children as in her own large family.

She grew up in Seaford, the youngest of four children in a big, loving Italian family.

As a senior at MacArthur High School, she met a 10th grade guy in the lunchroom eating Oreos. “I thought he was such a jerk,” Jacki said. The smart aleck was Kevin Dunning, and Jacki discovered they rode the same school bus. “We started talking, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh I really like him.’”

Dumplings were soon deployed as a romantic strategy. “Kevin’s favorite meal, and one of my mother’s specialties, was sauerbraten with German potato dumplings called kartoffelkloesse,” Jacki said.

After 10 years of long-distance courting, Jacki and Kevin married in 1994, celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary earlier this month.

After high school, Jacki went to the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and then on to a 10-year career at Revlon, starting as a secretary and working her way up to sales promotion, writing the scripts and information support for the sales staff.

Jacki and Kevin became a family of four as Matthew came along in 1996 and Elizabeth in 1998. Matthew graduated last year from the Shelter Island High School and is a freshman at St. Johns in Queens. (For now he won’t stray too far — “Matthew is addicted to my Tuscan tuna bread salad.”) Elizabeth (eggplant parmesan), is a junior at the high school.

Matthew’s birth marked the beginning of a new life for Jacki, in a place she never intended to be. “He’s the reason I left Revlon,” Jacki said. When he was three months old, Jacki and Kevin were preparing to move to a house up-island, minutes away from their parents, when Kevin proposed a change of plan.

“He said, ‘I have this great opportunity on Shelter Island,’” Jacki remembered. She agreed to move with the provision that they’d find a permanent home on the North or South Fork. Not on Shelter Island, because with a three month old, “The whole ferry thing was just beyond me,” she said.

They took a temporary rental on the Island so they could look for a house off-Island — a plan that 18 years later seems like a joke. “We fell in love with this place,” Jacki said.

Kevin built them a house, and Jacki started to live the Island life, volunteering as a classroom aide and serving on the pre-school board. In 2006, she took a paid part-time position working as a monitor at the school.

Within a few months, Jacki became secretary to Superintendent Sharon Clifford. In 2012, she was promoted to District Clerk, preparing the agenda and distributing the minutes of School Board meetings in a town where there is keen interest in every matter that comes before the board, due in part to the fact that about $10 million dollars of local property taxes fund the school. Jacki keeps the information flowing and sets up and oversees the budget votes.

She also smoothes the way for families coming to the school, answering their questions and working to “help make them feel safe and secure,” Jacki said. “Kindergarten parents, when they are first coming in, are scared. I want to be able to give them that comfort that the community gives in so many ways.”

There’s no better place than a public school to measure the shifting demographics of Island families. Over the years, Jacki has seen no change in the helpfulness and caring that has long characterized Island children. “It’s just this ray of sunshine,” she said. “We have the kindest children in our school. It’s a really beautiful place to raise your children.”

Jacki’s mother was diagnosed with lymphoma around the time of Elizabeth’s birth in 1998. The disease was treated and in remission for eight years, but when it returned, she didn’t have much time. Her last two years were difficult, but ultimately “one of the most beautiful experiences,” Jacki said. “I was able to spend a lot of time with her. My children were young but old enough to help me get through it. We openly mourned together — I wasn’t hiding things from them. We were honest about what was happening. My mom knew that and she appreciated it, for sure.”

In 2014, Matthew was on the Shelter Island boys basketball team that went further than any basketball team in the history of the school, winning the county championship.

”That was the most amazing experience as a parent,” Jacki said. “The fire department, the police department escorting their bus, those boys really felt the community support, I think it’s in the water. Don’t change the water!”

With Christmas coming, Jacki is in her glory. “Italian with grandmother- and mother-training, the kitchen is my favorite place in the house,” she said. “Homemade pasta with puttanesca sauce is on request for Matthew’s homecoming.”

Next Thursday, after Jacki’s weed soup, comes homemade pasta, one or two roasts, vegetables, salad and finally ”trays of cookies that my sister, cousins and I make, along with fruit and struffolli, fried balls coated with honey and nuts, another tradition of my mom’s. We’ll spend many hours together at the table enjoying this wonderful food and one another.”

Santa Claus is good at asking personal questions, like “Have you been a good boy?” and “What would you like for Christmas?”

It was his turn to answer questions when, fresh from his duties at the Shelter Island Historical Society Holiday Open House, we caught up with him. Santa agreed to an interview with the Reporter about his work, his life and his unique perspective on Shelter Island.

With a beautiful beard as white as, yes, snow, and a red fur-trimmed suit (faux fur, no polar bears were harmed), Santa is the rare winter visitor to Shelter Island, a place he loves as much as the good boys and girls of the Island.

“The extended Claus family has been familiar with Shelter Island, as with every community and outpost in the world, since the ice cap retreated many years ago,” he said.

To put it mildly, this is Santa’s busiest time of year. In the weeks leading up to December 25, he receives the wishes and dreams of children all over the world, and then in one magic night, delivers on them. Without benefit of fossil fuels.

He’s holding up well. His legendary beard would put a Brooklyn hipster to shame. He boasts the “big man” agility of Jackie Gleason and the grace of C.C. Sabathia when he springs to his sleigh.

Santa’s forebears hailed from North Pole, Alaska, and North Pole, New York. He lives now at the magnetic North Pole, where he and Mrs. Claus have raised a large family. Their offspring include, he said, “numerous potential Santas.”

Santa travels all over the world on his yearly rounds, but admits to being particularly fond of the Island. He described it as “one of our preferred communities, isolated, Internet-savvy and diverse.”

Several practical reasons make Shelter Island a welcome destination for Mr. Claus, such as the high quality of cookie baking and the condition and capacity of chimneys. “When the inlets ice up, they provide great landing sites for the sleigh,” he added.

Santa cites the Island wildlife as a draw for his team, the reindeers Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph. “There appear to be more deer on Shelter Island per acre than a lot of other communities,” he noted.

“The deer on the Island are particularly attracted to our reindeer.”

In recent years, Santa has made good use of sophisticated tools to spread holiday cheer. “We increasingly rely on social media for information as to what sorts of gifts would be most appreciated by each and every child in the world,” he said. “We use 3D printers to produce gifts en route, and our extended family makes the whole operation feasible and efficient.”

Like other workers, Santa said his helpers must keep up with the latest technology. “We did have a computer failure a number of years ago,” Santa said, “Happily our cadre of elves rectified it.”

Santa pointed out that in order to do his job, he must “see you when you’re sleeping and know when you’re awake.” This requires deployment of a domestic surveillance program that makes the National Security Agency look like pikers.

“It’s increasingly difficult to determine where each and every deserving child actually is, in order to provide the best possible service,” said Santa. “A seasonal community, such as Shelter Island, requires continual monitoring of Internet and cell phone chatter so that duplication is eliminated.”

This Jolly Old Elf is already thinking about ways to improve the making and delivering of toys to good girls and boys in the coming year. He said, “We plan to integrate our information systems with production facilities to continue to provide the best worldwide coverage in the most efficient manner possible.”

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Jim Pugh of the Shelter Island Historical Society who is one of Santa’s most diligent Island helpers.

12/24/2014

When I’m invited, I don’t like to show up empty-handed. But what to bring? More than once, I have blown it badly.

Like the time I brought a dozen live Chesapeake Bay blue crabs to the home of a woman who turned out to be allergic to shellfish. She was my college friend’s mother. I flew to their house in New Hampshire on a commuter plane from Norfolk, Virginia with a box of live crabs in the overhead.

During the flight, there was unrest among the crabs. The pleasant woman next to me, who was seated after I stowed my cargo, looked nervously around the cabin, searching for the source of the commotion. I played dumb.

Forbidden to enter my friend’s house with a box of allergens; I ended up in the driveway, hosing those beautiful blue crabs into a storm sewer.

During the holidays, tangy cheddar cheese puffs, with a touch of cayenne pepper are always welcome at a party. Except for that one incident involving an excessive amount of very fresh cayenne, and my failure to intercept a child who mistook the cheese puff for a cookie. No permanent damage, and I’m sure the kid has forgotten about it by now. Well, maybe.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix dry ingredients together. Cut in the butter and cheese with a pastry blender or two knives until the mixture is like coarse crumbs. Then mix by hand, grabbing handfuls until the dough barely holds together. Make 1-inch balls using a melon-baller, or by rolling the dough between your palms. Place the balls 2 inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.

12/15/2014

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Dick Jernick, where he’s most comfortable, at the wheel of his tractor-trailer.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on December 11, 2014

Dick Jernick sat in his favorite easy chair — the driver’s seat of a tractor trailer.

Although the motor wasn’t running, his hands rested on the huge steering wheel of the 2012 Freightliner Cascadia with a Detroit Diesel motor, hooked to a 2007 Kentucky trailer with an auto lift. Behind his Air Ride seat were bunk beds, a throw rug, a microwave, television and, in case of urgent need, a Porta-Potti.

The United States Department of Transportation estimates that Americans drove an average of 13,000 miles in 2013. Dick estimates he drives about 10 times that distance most years, and his life’s total could be over five million miles.

With numbers like that, the Porta-Potti starts to make sense.

Dick is the patriarch of Jernick Moving & Storage, one of the oldest family–owned businesses on the East End. Since his father, Thomas Jernick started the business in the early 1950s, they’ve hauled everything from antiques to zucchini to and from the East End and beyond.

“Driving has never bothered me,” Dick said. “I could start this thing up and go right to Florida without even thinking about it. When I sit in this I’m more comfortable than in my living room. It comes natural to me. It’s like a part of my body.”

Born in Southold in 1944, Dick and his family, which eventually included three brothers and two sisters, moved to Shelter Island when he was two years old. His father farmed the Shorewood property for the Garr family and delivered produce from Shorewood and other area farms to Washington Market in New York, until it was replaced by Hunts Point market in the 1960s. Thomas Jernick made the return trek east with his truck full of bicycles, furniture and trunks for New Yorkers summering in the Hamptons. “That’s how we first got into the moving business,” Dick said.

For over 60 years, the Jernick family hauled much of the freight that came to Shelter Island. That included everything from milk for the old Bohack grocery store, which predated the IGA, to the U. S. mail.

“We used to get the mail right off the train in Greenport,” Dick said. “My mom would haul it.”

To this day, all Shelter Island mail is delivered to the Island’s two post offices by Jernick Moving.

Dick would not say for the record when he first operated a motor vehicle, although he did admit, “I drove a farm tractor for the Garrs when I was seven or eight years old. I used to disc their asparagus.”

Often, Dick rode along with his dad on out-of-town trips. “By the time I was ten I could fall asleep in the truck, wake up anywhere on Long Island and tell you where I was,” he said.

A human GPS device from a tender age, Dick remembered a school assignment designed to build map-reading skills for Island fourth graders. “The homework was to look at a map and draw the route from Shelter Island to New York City,” Dick said.

“Instead, I drew two routes to Florida. One on the scenic route and the other on the fast route.”

Growing up here in the 1960s there were about 1,300 year-round residents. The intimate community was a blessing and a curse. “The whole Island was a family,” he said. “If someone’s kid was in trouble, everybody knew it, and everybody helped.”

On the other hand, “When I was 14 years old, having a cigarette in a movie theater, the next day my parents knew all about it.”Dick went off to the State University of New York at Oswego, but it wasn’t for him. “I went to college one year but I couldn’t stand it because a freshman couldn’t have a car,” he said, “That was it.”

In 1964, Dick married Martha Simes, an Island girl. Dick and Martha have four children, Richard, Scott, Tara and Dana, and will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in August. They also raised three foster children and, over the course of several years, Martha fostered many babies from birth to about six months when they were adopted.

In 1968 Dick became half of the two-man Shelter Island police force, serving for over 23 years. “When I was a policeman, if we arrested someone who was a single parent, there was no place for the kids to go. I had to bring home the children,” he said, “so the state said if you are going to keep bringing kids home, you have to get certified.” Their foster children, who live and work in California, South Carolina and Shelter Island “have all done well for themselves,” Dick said.

Like many Islanders, Dick always had more than one job and most required driving. One gig involved trips to Maine to pick up seed potatoes for Long Island farms. Road conditions were often brutal. “I rolled a brand new tractor-trailer on Route 1 in Presque Isle,” he remembered. “A guy was turning left, I was passing on the right, and I dropped the right front wheel into the snow and flipped right over. I weighed 96,000 pounds — 16,000 over the legal limit. Four wreckers put cables on me and hauled me out. I didn’t even break the mirror. There was so much snow, it was like a cushion.”

In those days, Dick’s CB handle was “Rusty Stacks,” a name inspired by the condition of the exhaust stacks on his tractor-trailer.

In addition to policing and driving, Dick was chief of the Shelter Island Heights Fire Department in the 1970s. In 1993, after five decades of Island life, Dick and Martha retired to South Carolina.

Retirement did not go well. His oldest son Richard was living nearby at the time and came over to check in. “Richard said,

‘What are you doing?’ and I said, ‘I’m waiting to die.’”

The retirement lasted three days.

Soon he had a new job driving doublewide mobile homes — 16 feet wide, and 106 feet long — from Florida and Georgia to the Carolinas. The legal speed limit for a doublewide was 45 miles an hour. “If you went much over 65 miles an hour, the shingles started flying off, but I used to hurricane-test them,” Dick said. “I carried a bucket of nails and a hammer with me.”

Dick’s five-year sojourn in the Carolinas came to an end when his sons, who had been running the family company, called him home. “They said, ‘Dad, we need you to drive the truck,’” Dick said. Actually not just drive the truck, but also load the truck.Dick and Martha moved back to Laurel on the North Fork in 2000, closer to children, grandchildren and the family business.

“This company is in family hands and will stay that way,” he said. “My oldest son Richard, there is no way he’s letting his grandfather’s business go. He was very close to my father.”

According to Dick, moving is not the same business as trucking. “Most trucking is just getting it there on time. Moving is a little different. You’ve got their whole life with you, their family treasures. You’ve got to make sure everything arrives safe.”

One measure of hard work is the state of a man’s shoes, and Dick Jernick’s say it all. Two months of loading and unloading is about all he gets out of his heavy-soled boots.

Now in his 70s, “The heart doctor tried to get me to do cardio work,” Dick said. “I told him, ‘Carry some furniture upstairs and we’ll see about your cardio workout.’”

His current retirement plan? “Not till they pry my dead cold fingers from the steering wheel,” he said. “I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.”

12/09/2014

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTOCindy Belt at Mashomack, grateful for work she loves in a place she feels lucky to have found.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on December 4, 2014

The American humorist Garrison Keillor tells of a mythical small town where, “All the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children are above average.”

When you speak with Cindy Belt — environmental educator, wife, mother and Shelter Island School girls volleyball coach — you can’t help thinking she lives in that town.

Tall, smart, athletic, with a notorious compulsion to pick up litter wherever she sees it, Cindy grew up among strong women and has raised her own strong tribe.

Since 1990, she’s been education and outreach coordinator at Mashomack, guiding a generation of young people toward an understanding and appreciation of the land and wildlife in the 2,039 acres of woods, fields, creeks and marshes protected by the Nature Conservancy.

Born in Sodus, New York, Cindy was the second child in a family with four daughters, Sue, Cindy, Martha and Emily. Their father was an Episcopal priest whose girls teasingly referred to him as “Father Dad.” Cindy “learned to talk in upstate New York” before the family moved to Rhode Island when she was eight. Her father died of Parkinson’s, but her mother and sisters all still live in New England. Cindy and her sisters take a trip together every year and gather for holidays.

She majored in biology at Cornell, with a special interest in ecology and marine studies. After graduating, she met another Cornell student, Mark Cappellino, while both were doing humpback whale research and working on whale-watching boats out of Gloucester, Massachusetts. They married in 1988.

Cindy said, “I married a man who had two brothers and no sisters. He said, ‘What would you do with a sister?’ and I said, ‘Well, what would you do with a brother?’”

They figured it out and moved to Shelter Island in 1990. Their sons, Andrew and Matt BeltCappellino were born, raised and schooled on Shelter Island. Andrew is a senior at Binghamton University majoring in biology and Matt is a freshman at the University of Vermont.

Cindy and Mark discovered Shelter Island when they came to investigate a position at Mashomack that Cindy was considering. “I had never heard of Shelter Island at that time,” she recalled. “Was it even a real island? When I looked at a map and saw the dot, dot, dot indicating a ferry, I said, ‘I have to check this out.’”

On the ferry “I got out and stood by the rail like we all do when we first come over,” Cindy said. “I was wearing jeans and sneakers and thought I’d stop at a gas station and change into my interview outfit. Well, you know how that went. I ended up at the library.”

As Cindy and Mark drove to the Manor House where Cindy would work and they would live, the dirt road and the canopy of mature trees overhead made a deep impression on her. “Having trees completely over the road like that, it made me think, ‘Oh this is a place I could be.’”

The couple lived in the Water Tower, part of the Manor House complex, “We came out of the woods and made our way into town,” Cindy said, to play adult basketball and volleyball during open gym times.

A standout volleyball player in high school and college, Cindy’s skills prompted someone to suggest she should consider coaching the girls volleyball team “about 10 minutes after we got here,” according to Mark. Cindy declined in 1990, but 14 years later, she was ready.

By then, Andrew and Matt were active athletes themselves, involved in multiple sports at the Shelter Island School. Cindy said, “I’d go watch the girls play volleyball once in a while and one of the parents said, ‘Why don’t you get involved and coach?’” Cindy started volunteering in 2004, coached the JV team starting in 2005, and when Jackie Brewer stepped away from coaching in 2008, she became the varsity coach.

Cindy’s coaching record is spectacular. The teams she coached have been county champions for the past 11 years and undefeated league champs for six years in a row. She was just named coach of the year in League VIII by her colleagues.

The prowess of the team has to be seen in the context of size. In spite of being one of the smallest schools competing in New York State, Shelter Island has still managed to field a varsity and JV team since 2004, an incredible accomplishment considering it takes at least 18 girls from a school with only about 35 who are even eligible to play.

“What it does for the girls is give them a sense of accomplishment and confidence,” Cindy said. “We get kids who haven’t played in other sports. They can come in and be successful and learn skills and be part of something bigger than themselves. I think that’s wonderful.”

Some of her instruction goes beyond the game. “I tell my volleyball girls they need to have a refillable water bottle and know how to drive a stick shift.” Cindy said. “As a woman you need to be ready, confident, prepared and self-reliant.”

Her work at Mashomack is to broaden and deepen the public programs and bring more people to the preserve, because, she said, “You’re not going to love and save what you don’t know about.”

Although the Children’s Summer Environmental Program started before Cindy came to Mashomack, she worked to make it a wildly popular program, accomplished almost entirely with volunteers. “We see kids come in as third graders and then want to stay as youth assistants, coming back every year from age 8 to 18,” she said. “Our board is extremely involved, as are local teachers.”

Part of Cindy’s educational mandate for the future will be to explore and describe the human history of Mashomack and how that coordinates with natural history. “People often come here and say, ‘What a pristine area,’ but actually, no,” she said. “There have been people living here for hundreds of years. Why does Mashomack look the way it does? What was the impact of the Nicoll family on the land?”

Cindy is grateful for work she loves in a place she feels lucky to have found.

“When we first moved here, it felt like we were living in the 50s,” she said. “Now it’s more like the 70s. It is still idyllic, it’s still wonderful, but we are now catching up with the rest of the world.”

12/03/2014

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Bryan Gallagher at rest, not a normal situation for the Islander.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on November 27, 2014

Some people run away from large fires. Bryan Gallagher runs toward them.

Bryan travels a lot for his work, but not to conference rooms and office buildings. The work sites he frequents are usually either charred, flooded, wind-damaged or the location of a huge mishap.

He is a New York State Forest Ranger. When bad things happen, he is on it. From 911 to the BP oil spill, to Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, Bryan has been part of the response.

“I grew up in the city and that shaped me,” Bryan said. His parents Eugene and Sharon Gallagher, sister Jeannine and his 11-month-younger “Irish twin” brother Kevin, lived in Hell’s Kitchen on the West Side.

Bryan grew up playing the classic New York street games, including stickball, “skellies” and “hot peas and butter,” which he described as “a sadistic game of tag.“

The family moved to the Midland Beach section of Staten Island when Bryan’s mother told the kids, “We’re going to get out of the city because we don’t want you to grow up to be bank robbers.”

Bryan was deep into sports, playing baseball from the age of five, where his speed eventually landed him in center field. His dad made sure the family got outdoors. “At some point my dad bought a log cabin up in the Catskills. He took us bow-hunting when we were 12 or 13 years old,” Bryan said. “We were out there before the sun came up and didn’t leave until the sun came down, no matter what the weather.”

After graduating from Pace University in 1989 with an accounting degree, Bryan went to work in Manhattan at a small, family-owned accounting firm, Shulman, Weingarten & Co.

Shortly after starting work as a CPA, Bryan met the woman who would become his wife, through the girlfriend of a friend. Bryan and his buddy were in the middle of a car repair, when the ladies showed up.

He rolled out from under the car with his fly wide open and introduced himself to Christine Nelsen, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Fortunately for him, she had a sense of humor. Six years later they were married.

In 1992, Bryan and Christine’s world turned upside down. While skiing in the Catskills with Bryan’s dad, his father hit ice on the side of the trail, went into the woods and suffered internal injuries. “We were there with him, all day, and finally he died,” Bryan said, “I was only 24 years old.”

The death of his father made Bryan rethink his goals. Life as a CPA meant tax season was his busiest time, but “I did not want to work indoors from January through April every year.” He decided to become a forest ranger.

Bryan took an important step toward his goal in 1995, enrolling at SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry Ranger School. He left the city to spend a year in the Adirondack town of Wanakena, New York, population 50. “It was in the middle of basically nowhere,” Bryan said, “That was a great year of my life.”

At Ranger School, the violence and unpredictability of nature was part of the curriculum. On July 15, 1995, a rare storm with winds of 100 miles per hour flattened the forest near Wanakena, killing five people, and stranding 90 hikers in the backcountry. It was one of the largest “tree blowdowns” ever observed in the Adirondack Mountains.

A month later Bryan’s ranger class studied surveying in the remains of that forest, climbing up and over the blow-down. “Our survey instructors loved it.”

By 1999, Bryan was a New York State Ranger, assigned to Suffolk County and four years later he and his family, which now included three-year-old Lindsey and one-year-old Emma, moved to Shelter Island.

Christine had summered on the Island as a kid, when her family lived on a boat in Coecles Harbor. “After looking around, we thought this was a really nice place to live and to raise a family,” Bryan said. “No traffic lights, no fast food chains … as close to a rural community as you can get on Long Island.”

On a quiet day, Bryan’s work involves patrolling New York State Department of Environmental Conservation lands, especially the 100,000-acre Pine Barrens around Manorville. He’s part of the Incident Command System — an organization of state and federal agencies that are ready to deploy in case of an emergency.

Wildfires in the Western states are increasingly an annual event. New York State Forest Rangers have a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Forest Service, meaning Bryan has been called to duty in California, Idaho and Arizona.

Every spring, he takes four to six weeks to get himself in shape for wildfire season by running. “When you go out West to the mountain fires you are at altitude,” he said. “If you are not in shape, you won’t enjoy yourself.”

Some summers, the wildfires are closer to home. In 1995 and again in 2012, massive wildfires broke out in the Pine Barrens. Bryan recalled heading home from work on April 9, 2012 and getting a phone call when he reached Greenport from one of the guys he worked with.

“He said, ‘We got another fire,’ and I said, ‘Is it worth turning around?’ He said, ‘Why don’t you just look in your rear view mirror?’ I stopped my vehicle, turned around, and saw the smoke column from 35 miles away. I said, ‘I’ll be right there.’”

As interesting and challenging as he found working wildfires, Bryan said his most rewarding deployment was the three weeks he spent in Breezy Point, Queens in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

There, some 135 homes caught fire and burned during the storm in an area so flooded that firefighters could do nothing to stop the fire. Bryan worked in the aftermath, trying to coordinate and distribute truckloads of FEMA-provided water, to support the needs of the first responders with mobile handwashing and shower units, and supporting nonprofits such as Habitat for Humanity, whose volunteers needed mobile generators to heat the firehouses and churches where they were temporarily housed.

“2012,” Bryan said, “that was a busy year.”

When he’s not coordinating a fire response or helping mop up after an oil spill, Bryan is a normal dad in a uniform that happens to have a pine tree on the sleeve. “I like to stay connected to my kids,” he said. Both daughters are athletes and sport has been an important way for Bryan to interact with them, coaching Little League with Dave Gurney and softball with Greg Martin.

This year was his first coaching the varsity cross country team with Toby Green. “Toby and I started a little running club with the goal of bringing the cross country team back to Shelter Island,” Bryan said. “Now it’s a line item in the budget. Eight kids went to the State Championship this year.”

Bryan worked the past four years volunteering on ski patrol at Butternut in Massachusetts. He said thoughts of his father’s fatal accident have something to do with it, as well as wanting “to be a part of helping others and be a good role model for the kids.”

“I love what I do,” Bryan said. “I’m glad I made the change. There is not a single day when I regret my decision.”